Medieval Ireland. An Encyclopedia

SCOTTI/SCOTS

Palestine are largely derived from written sources,
though he also refers to oral information communi-
cated from a traveler to those parts, a “brother Fidelis,”
from whom he also got one of the earliest descriptions
in Western vernacular literature of a Nile crocodile.

References and Further Reading

Further bibliography in M. Lapidge, R. Sharpe,
A Bibliography
of Celtic-Latin Literature 400–1200
(Dublin, 1985).
Kenney, J. F.
The Sources for the Early History of Ireland:
1 Ecclesiastical
(New York, 1966 [1929], reprinted Dublin,
1993).
Monumenta Germaniae Historia
Epistolae
IV, 570–583.
M. Esposito, “An unpublished astronomical treatise by an
Irish monk Dicuil,”
R.I.A. Proc.
xxvi, sect. C (1907),
378–446 (with addenda and corrigenda by the editor in
Z.C.P.
viii, 1910: 506–507).
van de Vyver, A. “Dicuil et Micon,”
Revue Belge de philologie
et d’histoire
14 (1935), 25–47 (with an edition of Liber
censuum).
Tierney, J. J., editor. with contribution by L. Bieler,
Dicuili Liber
de mensura orbis terrae
(SLH 6, 1967).
Reynolds, R. “Further evidence for the Irish origin of Honorius
Augustodunensis.”
Vivarium
7 (1969), 1–7.
Ferrari, M. “In Papia conveniant ad Dungalum.”
Italia mediovale
e humanistica
15 (1972), 1–52.
Flint, V. “The career of Honorius Augustodunensis: some fresh
evidence.”
Revue Benedictine
82 (1972), 63–86.
Gautier-Dalché, Patrick. “Tradition et renouvellement dans la
représentation d’espace geeographie au IX siecle”
Studi
Medievali
ser. 3, 24.1 (1983), 121–165.
Garrigues, M.O. “L’oeuvre d’Honorius Augustodunensis:
Inventaire critique.”
Abhandlungen der Braunschweigischen
Wissentschaftlichen Gesellschaft
38 (1986), 7–136; 39
(1987), 123–228.
Bermann, W. “Dicuils De mensura orbis terrae.” Edited by
P. L. Butzer and D. Lohrmann,
Science in Western and
Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times
(Basel, 1993),
527–537.
Stansfield Eastwood, B. “The astronomy of Macrobius in
Carolingian Europe: Dungal’s letter of 811 to Charles the
Great.”
Early Medieval Europe
3.2 (1992), 117–134.
Ó Cróinín, D.
Early Medieval Ireland 400–1200,
(London, New
York, 1995).
Smyth, Marina.
Understanding the Universe in Seventh-Century
Ireland

. Studies in Celtic History 15 (Woodbridge, 1996).
McCarthy, D., and A. Breen. “An evaluation of the astronomical
observations in the Irish annals.”
Vistas in Astronomy
40.1
(1997), 117–138.
McCarthy, D., and A. Breen. “Astronomical observations in the
Irish annals and their motivation.”
Peritia
11 (1997), 1–43.

SCOTTI/SCOTS
Scotti
is a Latin word which initially was applied to
all Gaels, but which later came to be used in a more
confined way to refer only to Gaels in northern Britain.
It is first attested in the late third century
A
.
D

. in Roman

texts, and gradually came to replace

Hiberni

as the

people-term for the Gaels. St. Patrick used it in his

fifth-century epistles—sometimes with a pejorative

sense, as when he refers to the followers of Coroticus

as “socii Scottorum atque Pictorum apostatarumque”

(companions of Scots and Picts and apostates; Epis-

tola, I, ii). Its etymology is uncertain, because it is

unrelated to any known Gaelic word, but it may have

meant “raider,” describing Gaels who attacked Britain

in the Late-Roman period.

In the early medieval period it was also adopted by

both the Gaels in Ireland and Britain to describe them-

selves. Adomnán’s

Life of St. Columba

, written about

700

A

.

D

., uses

Scoti

for both Gaels in Ireland and

Britain,

Scoti Brittaniae

for Dál Riata in Britain, and

the derivative term

Scotia

denotes Ireland, rather than

part of Britain, while Muirchú’s Life of St Patrick

describes Tara as “capital of the

Scotti

.” A reflex of

this is that a woman called

Scotta was created as one

of the eponymous ancestors of the Gaels in their origin

legends.

From the ninth century onward the use of these and

cognate terms began to change. David Dumville has

recently pointed out that Old Norse Skotar and Old

English Scottas (from about 900 onward) were used

for Gaels in northern Britain only and that Scotland in

Old English came to be confined in meaning to Gaelic

parts of northern Britain, while Old Norse Írar and

Old English Iras were terms for the Irish. The exact

explanation of these changes is unclear, but the effects

of Scandinavian raids and the transition from Pictish

to Gaelic identity in much of Scotland north of the

Firth of Forth may have increased the need for separate

designations for the Gaels in Ireland and Britain.

Equivalent developments did not occur in Gaelic

nomenclature until much later. In the late tenth century

Scotti and Scotia were first used for part of northern

Britain in contrast to the Irish and Ireland, but the

change was more gradual. By the twelfth century

Scotia had come to denote the core territory of the

Gaelic kingdom of Alba, rather than areas of later

conquest, such as Lothian and Moray, but in the early

thirteenth century the term gradually came to mean all

the territories of the kingdom of Alba, whereas Scoti

was used by chroniclers in Melrose to describe them-

selves by the 1290s. As the kingdom of Alba expanded,

so did the geographical area and number of people

covered by these terms increased to their modern

extent. However, the usage of Scotti in Alba was never

as clearcut as for Scotia, because of the remaining

connections between the Gaels in Ireland and Scotland

and a continuing belief in a common origin as late as

the fourteenth century. In Ireland the wider meaning

of these terms was still used in the early fourteenth

century, when the “Irish Remonstrance” employed